Incomprehensibility

I’ve never really known how Dr. Klock is related to me, but I’ve never really cared. The fact that he offered to teach me Greek some time ago was enough. The man is a walking phenomenon. He brings his Greek New Testament to Church, but has spent the last ten or so years of his life getting back into Old Testament Hebrew. He and his wife have a back “study” room which I like to joke is not made of walls, but rather of bookcases: thousands of volumes on the Bible and language and commentaries and everything.

I bring this up only to frame the story. We get back to me spending my morning looking at the Bible in significant depth, cross-checking dates and authors and translations.

That evening I get to the gym and starting stretching for fencing. One of the other fencers –who will go unnamed– approached me with the idea that he wanted to make a movie about the Bible. I noted that such an endeavor was hardly original, but he said he wanted to make it “different.” Here’s a rough paraphrase:

Him: I want to make something different, to take a less miraculous look at the life of Jesus. A more scholarly approach.
Me: Wait, you want a more scholarly look at the Bible?
Him: Yeah.
Me: The Bible was WRITTEN by scholars.
Him: Well, yeah, but…I want a more learned approach.
Me: …have you even read the Bible?
Him: Oh course!
Me: So…you want a more scholarly approach to something that was meticulously documented, written, organized, and preserved and passed down in a scholarly tradition from Hebrew and Greek scholars?
[It is at this point that he tries to explain something, with many stumbles and stutters, linking words and phrases together which have some kind of association but no real meaning.]
Me: Okay, look, let’s start over. Why are you making this movie?
Him: Well, I want to present a different version of Jesus, one that everyone can enjoy.
Me: You’re probably not going to be able to do that. If you change anything, Christians aren’t going to like it.
Him: Well, I wouldn’t change anything. I would keep to what the Bible said. I just want to present a view that both Atheists and Christians can appreciate.
Me: But you just said you weren’t going to change it.
Him: I’m not. I’m just showing it differently.
Me: ….have you read the Bible?
Him: Well, yes, but I just…

And this repeated, and repeated, until I told him to go home and read what he’s talking about first, or at least just stop talking and fence.

And then yesterday morning some Jehovah’s Witness came to my door while I was getting ready to go to work. The lady asked me if I knew what the most authoritative translation of the Bible was. When I replied that I hated reading in translation and had just acquired my Greek Testament, she gave me a placating, “that’s nice” and went on to explain the benefits of the translation she had in her purse.